WELLINGTON CONSTANTINE PUT DOWN THE Sunday New York Times and gazed out at the swimming pool where his wife, Clare, had just finished her laps and was climbing up the ladder on the opposite side. He admired her tanned, toned body, the womanly hips and, when she grabbed her towel and turned toward him, the ample bosom that had caught his eye when he was still on wife number two.
Twenty-five years his junior, he had to admit that Clare was still a stunning woman at age forty. And yet, though she’d lasted longer than any of the others (they were coming up on their eighteenth wedding anniversary), he was tired of her. Actually, he had been for a long time, but a combination of laziness and a preoccupation with his multifaceted business pursuits, as well as consolidating his political power in Washington and abroad, had delayed his doing anything about it.
As one of the wealthiest men in the world—the Long Island beach mansion they were currently living in was just one of many fabulous estates—he had his pick of young, beautiful women to attend to his physical needs. A wife was just an accessory for a man like him, akin to choosing the right tie, to be used for public functions and as a tool to present his “softer side” to a gullible public.
In that regard, the former Clare Dune had served him well. She was an Olympic-caliber swimmer when he met her at a fund-raising event for the U.S. Olympic Team. There’d been a whirlwind courtship when he’d overwhelmed her concerns about their “fall-spring” age difference and the fact that he was married with gifts, travel, and promises to divorce his second wife. He’d accomplished the latter when his wife gracefully, and probably gratefully, agreed to the divorce with a generous settlement. Her publicist had even issued a press release stating that they’d “mutually agreed to go their separate ways while remaining friends, as well as parents to their son.” He’d then cemented the deal with Clare by promising to let her spend a good deal of his money on her charitable interests.
In fact, Clare was a genuine do-gooder who’d proceeded over the years to spend a small fortune on charities and noble causes all over the world. He really could not have cared less about feeding starving children in sub-Saharan Africa or saving dolphins from Japanese fishermen, but he considered it money well spent on public relations. His wife and her “team” did all of the work, and when necessary he’d fly into whatever godforsaken backwater she was championing at the moment for photo ops to appear in People magazine or the Washington Post. Then he’d fly back off to wherever he needed to be to further his true interests: the acquisition of money and power. The only thing they had in common was their son, Tommy, now fourteen years old.
Thanks to Clare, they were the ultimate Beltway progressive power couple in D.C., the darlings of the Manhattan liberal establishment, the toast of their party from Miami to San Francisco, and frequent dinner guests at the White House. Two years earlier they’d been feted by the Hollywood and music industry elite at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as the Philanthropic Couple of the Year, where politicians toadied up, hoping to catch a moment with him and his bankroll.
Little did those people know that in the privacy of their homes and hotel rooms, he enjoyed slapping Clare around, careful not to leave marks on her face, though his cruel words probably hurt her far worse than blows from his hands or feet. When she tried refusing sex, he raped her, not because he really wanted her but to show her who was boss.
He knew she was always judging him—she knew what he really thought of her “bleeding-heart hobbies”—and it made him angry. Over the past few years she’d turned to alcohol to drown the disappointments of her marriage. Unfortunately for her, the booze sometimes resulted in her speaking her mind when it would have been better to stay silent. She’d once even threatened to expose him as nothing more than a disingenuous power broker, a philanderer, and a wife abuser. That had sent him over the edge, and he’d choked her until she blacked out. When she came to, he told her that the next time she threatened him she wouldn’t be waking up.
There’d also been the time she left him for three days, apparently going to a women’s shelter in Manhattan. He’d sent his man Shaun Fitzsimmons after her. Fitzsimmons was a six-foot-five, rock-hard black-belt bodyguard and general good man Friday. He was also a former Special Forces member who’d been drummed out of the service after being court-martialed for brutality against Iraqi civilians. Yet even he wasn’t able to find her. So he shut down her credit cards and knew she’d return if for no other reason than their son. When she came back, he beat her black and blue. “And if you ever leave me without permission, you’ll never see Tommy again,” he sneered into her tear-stained face.
Lately she’d seemed unusually happy. She didn’t give him any “looks,” or challenge him in any way. She even seemed to be drinking less. He wondered if it was because she was screwing Richie Bryers, the basketball coach at the exclusive prep school where Tommy was enrolled. He’d hired Bryers to coach Tommy in his spare time, also figuring that the “golden carrot” would assure his boy a place on the varsity squad in a couple of years.
As if on cue, Bryers appeared from the bathhouse where he’d apparently been changing into a swimsuit and white robe. He removed the robe to enter the pool. Constantine studied the man. An avid tennis player, he was no slouch himself, but he was impressed with the coach’s tanned, sculpted physique. He knew the man stayed active not just on the basketball court where he’d once been a highly recruited New York Public High School player and then all-American point guard at Harvard, but also was a skier, surfer, and mountain climber.
Bryers saw him looking and smiled and waved. Constantine smiled and waved back. He actually liked the man—at least, as much as he liked anyone—and that’s why he extended the use of the pool and guesthouse to him whenever they were spending time there. It didn’t hurt that he believed that between the money and the “perks,” Bryers was bought and paid for in regard to his son’s special tutoring and future on the team. After all, he chuckled to himself, everyone has a price.
Yet Constantine hadn’t intended one of those side benefits to include sex with his wife. He didn’t really care about her, and it made him all the more determined that divorce number three would be a fact before the end of the year. But on principle he didn’t like the idea of anyone helping himself to anything he owned, and he owned Clare. He glanced over at his wife; she was watching Bryers as he lowered himself into the pool. She felt Constantine’s eyes on her and looked his way. Guilty, he thought angrily, and made a mental note to put Fitzsimmons on them to confirm his suspicions.
However, at the moment he had more important things to deal with. He looked down at a leather-bound notebook open on the table next to the lounge chair he was lying on. He’d kept a journal since he was a lonely child brought up by an alcoholic mother and his shipping tycoon father. The kind of notebooks had changed over the years from the old black-and-white composition notebook to the current version that he had made special for him. But he’d kept them all—hundreds of them—now lining an entire wall-length bookshelf in his library.
Some of what he wrote when he was young were just musings of a boy or comments on other kids and people. But as he grew older, he’d used them to “think through” and plan out his business dealings, especially after becoming a business major at Princeton and he was well on his way—with the help of his father’s fortune—to building an empire. The notebooks included his innermost thoughts, as well as details of some transactions and projects that at best were unethical and often criminal. He knew they were dangerous to keep, but he didn’t trust computers. Besides, it gave him an almost sexual thrill to look up from his desk and see a library’s worth of his writing.
Even if it was a risk, he wasn’t worried. Money bought a lot of things, including law enforcement, judges, and public opinion. The press fawned all over him, and any independent media sources that dared say anything else were quickly dismissed as “politically motivated” by their colleagues, Constantine’s supporters, and the adoring public. His homes were protected by state-of-the-art security, as well as the ominous presence of Mr. Fitzsimmons and his nefarious team of goons.
Constantine frowned. The notebook was open to his latest journaling about his most ambitious project yet. But it hadn’t been going well, and in fact, if the ship didn’t get righted soon, his whole empire could come crashing down around his ears and he’d find himself decorating a federal prison cell. But he was no coward; the thought of his scheme—both what he planned to accomplish and the risk—gave him a rush, and he intended to make it happen. And I always, always get what I set my mind to, he thought.
“Excuse me, there’s a call for you, Mr. Constantine.”
He turned at the deep bass of Fitzsimmons’s voice. “The one I’m expecting?” he asked.
“Apparently there’s been a glitch.”
Constantine scowled. He didn’t like “glitches” and paid good money for them not to happen. “I’ll take it in the library,” he said curtly.
As he stood to go back into the house, Constantine nodded toward his wife, who was seated on one of the sun chairs. “I want those two watched. Let me know what they’re doing.”
Fitzsimmons raised an eyebrow, then smirked. “You got it, boss. Want me to do anything if they’re up to some hanky-panky?”
Constantine’s eyes narrowed. “No, just let me know. I’ll decide what to do after that.”